New York City Housing Authority

Andrea Mohin/The New York Times

News about New York City Housing Authority, including commentary and archival articles published in The New York Times.

Chronology of Coverage

Jun. 25, 2015

New York City comptroller's office releases audit finding that hundreds of city's public housing units remain unnecessarily vacant; finds average vacancy of seven years for apartments that undergo major renovations; issue has contributed to shortage of affordable housing and has long plagued the New York City Housing Authority. MORE

May. 26, 2015

Editorial assesses plan by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio to reform Housing Authority and focus on making needed repairs to city's 328 public-housing developments, all of which are in deplorable condition; notes that primary obstacle to plan's success is necessity of finding sufficient funding, particularly for repairs and maintenance that could cost upwards of $16 billion. MORE

May. 20, 2015

Many public housing residents are skeptical of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's plan to improve dilapidated buildings by increasing funding for New York City Housing Authority; plan involves higher parking fees and rent collection rates at projects as well as more money from city to make up for nationwide federal cuts. MORE

Mar. 26, 2015

Michael P Kelly will return to post as general manager of the New York City Housing Authority as agency faces even deeper financial struggles than during his previous tenure. MORE

Feb. 25, 2015

Shola Olatoye, chairwoman of New York City Housing Authority, often has her last name mispronounced by those who need to introduce her or welcome her in public appearances, including Mayor Bill de Blasio. MORE

Dec. 18, 2014

New York City Comptroller Scott M Stringer releases audit showing city's Housing Authority, which faces large budget deficit and unfunded capital needs of about $18 billion, missed opportunities to obtain nearly $700 million in federal funding; Stringer accuses the public housing agency of bureaucratic incompetence. MORE

Dec. 17, 2014

Elected officials at New York City Council hearing discuss New York City Housing Authority practices they say have exacerbated unsafe conditions and heightened unease among residents of city's public housing. MORE

Dec. 16, 2014

New York City police officers routinely look not only for criminal behavior but also behavior that violates New York City Housing Authority rules when they patrol housing projects; little scrutiny has been paid to tactic amid broader calls to ratchet down pressure on low-level crimes. MORE

Sep. 16, 2014

Op-Ed article by author Jayne Merkel proposes solution to repair and upgrade crisis in New York City's public housing, which has reached an $18 billion backlog over 10 years due to budget cuts; suggests New York City Housing Authority could train tenants to do basic maintenance and pay them for it, reducing backlog and ameliorating unemployment. MORE

Sep. 8, 2014

New York City comptroller’s office reports that windows across the city’s public housing complexes have fallen into a degree of disrepair; from 2005 to 2011, after a period of modest gains, the number of broken or missing windows in New York City Housing Authority buildings has increased 945 percent. MORE

Aug. 12, 2014

New York City Housing Authority officials say that after years of shrinking government investment in public housing, agency has $77 million budget deficit in 2014 and unfunded capital needs totaling $18 billion; shortfall leaves agency unable to meet many of its day-to-day obligations, like timely repairs, and renovations have been put off in city's 334 public housing developments. MORE

Jul. 25, 2014

New York City Comptroller Scott M Stringer releases stinging audit of New York City Housing Authority, charging that it has repeatedly broken agreement to hire certain percentage of public housing residents or low-income New Yorkers in awarding building contracts. MORE

Jun. 6, 2014

Editorial contends there is no excuse for the absence of basic safety features, like security cameras, in New York City Housing Authority's buildings; praises rapid, aggressive police work that led to arrest of Daniel St Hubert, suspect in stabbing of two children in Brooklyn public-housing elevator, but says housing authority and Mayor Bill de Blasio must now devise and put in place broader safety plan for city's public housing residents. MORE

Mar. 24, 2014

Federal Emergency Management Agency and New York City Housing Authority, under $100 million deal, agree to replace unreliable temporary boilers used by all 110 New York City public housing buildings for heat and hot water after Hurricane Sandy flooded their original ones in 2012. MORE

Feb. 13, 2014

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio proposes his first budget for city, with $73.7 billion spending plan; with tax on wealthy residents to pay for prekindergarten classes, financing for inspector general to monitor Police Department and relief for the Housing Authority of costs of policing its apartment towers, preliminary budget is recapitulation of de Blasio’s campaign platform and of recurring themes of his first weeks in office. MORE

Dec. 27, 2013

Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio has promised to end payments by New York City Housing Authority to cover cost of about 2,000 police officers who patrol public housing projects; authority pays Police Department about $70 million a year, legacy of mergers that brought transit and housing authority police forces into the New York Police Department almost 20 years ago. MORE

Dec. 17, 2013

New York City Housing Authority will deal more quickly and more thoroughly with mold in its apartments as part of an agreement by the Bloomberg administration to settle a federal lawsuit by people living in housing projects and coping with asthma; agreement covers all of the more than 400,000 tenants in city's public housing, and requires housing officials to recognize asthma as a disability. MORE

Dec. 16, 2013

New York City Housing Authority auditors find hundreds of public housing units have sat unoccupied year after year awaiting major renovations or decision about their fate; authority plays key role in preserving affordable housing in city, with nearly 179,000 apartments in its control; funding issues and empty units poses test for Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio, who has promised to increase city's affordable housing stock. MORE

Nov. 15, 2013

New York City Housing Authority announces easing of ban on recently released prisoners, allowing some of them to live in public housing; will begin pilot program that aims to relax admission policies to help recently released prisoners reunite with their families; move makes authority one of first public housing agencies in nation to test lifting such restrictions. MORE

Oct. 30, 2013

Many public housing residents still find themselves perilously reliant on the New York City Housing Authority for repairs, even one year since devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy; agency has found it was unprepared for flooded boiler rooms and wrecked electrical systems caused by storm; complaints from public housing tenants are not new, but many speak of a heightened sense of neglect from what they say is an unresponsive city bureaucracy. MORE

Jul. 24, 2013

Half a million New York City residents are on the Housing Authority's application list for public housing, underscoring how the city continues to face a shortage of housing for the poor and the working class; federal law prevents housing authorities from building addition units, and with federal aid declining, the New York City agency faces difficulty maintaining the projects that it has. MORE

Jul. 5, 2013

Mayor Michael R Bloomberg is remaking the board of the New York City Housing Authority; under a state measure sought by Bloomberg, approved by the State Legislature and signed by Gov Andrew M Cuomo, board will expand to seven members from four, including three tenant positions instead of one, and eliminating its two highly paid full-time positions. MORE

Apr. 30, 2013

Hundreds of residents of Alfred E Smith Houses in Lower Manhattan file lawsuits in Housing Court demanding repairs or civil penalties against New York City Housing Authority if numerous repairs needed throughout 12-building complex are not completed. MORE

Mar. 12, 2013

New York City Housing Authority, facing one of most serious financial shortfalls in its history, plans to lease open land on the grounds of city housing projects to developers to generate revenue; authority wants to raise more than $50 million a year on long-term leases for parks, courtyards, parking lots, playgrounds and other property, seeking to address a $6 billion backlog of repairs in public housing units. MORE

Feb. 19, 2013

Michael Powell Gotham column comments on plan by New York City Housing Authority to generate revenue for much-needed housing repairs by allowing developers to build on parking lots of public housing; observes that plan, which may in fact relieve some of the authority's chronic debt, is unnerving to city's public housing tenants, who express real fears about the next target for private development. MORE

Feb. 7, 2013

Editorial calls on Mayor Michael R Bloomberg to leave an important legacy by ensuring that the Housing Authority eliminates huge backlog of repairs needed in New York City's public housing complexes; argues that timely repairs are not only right thing to do for residents, but will help preserve housing that is critically important to the city. MORE

Jan. 3, 2013

Many housing project residents say that New York City Housing Authority encouraged them to 'go green,' but did little to help with efforts to move toward environmental sustainability, and even stood in their way; agency documents show that more than half of the 334 public housing projects in the city do not even have recycling bins. MORE

Dec. 31, 2012

Ocean Bay Community Center in Arverne, Queens, which has been providing relief supplies to area residents since Hurricane Sandy, is told by officials from the New York City Housing Authority to shut down for cleaning and remediation work; group's executive director says that hundreds of people still rely on the relief program at the center, and expresses fears that closure could be permanent. MORE

Dec. 11, 2012

Editorial criticizes response by New York City's bureaucracy to needs of its most vulnerable citizens in public housing in wake of Hurricane Katrina; calls on working group established by Mayor Michael Bloomberg to take hard look at overall management of New York City Housing Authority and to require workable emergency response plan for public housing. MORE

Dec. 10, 2012

Examination by The New York Times finds that the New York City Housing Authority was woefully unprepared to reach residents stranded by Hurricane Sandy without heat, power or access to supplies; while agency moved aggressively before the storm to encourage residents to leave, both it and the city government at large were woefully unprepared to help its residents deal with Hurricane Sandy’s lingering aftermath. MORE

Dec. 10, 2012

Timeline of New York City Housing Authority's response to victims of Hurricane Sandy; city began large-scale effort to reach out to stranded residents only after volunteer groups raised alarms. MORE

Nov. 25, 2012

Ginia Bellafante Big City column examines the grievances aired against the New York City Housing Authority at a meeting for tenants of Red Hook Houses in Brooklyn, intended to address aftermath of Hurricane Sandy; holds that the session revealed how deeply in opposition the reality of public-housing tenants is with the reality inhabited by the administrators to whom they are beholden. MORE

Sep. 25, 2012

New York City Housing Authority chairman John B Rhea unveils a plan to squeeze hundreds of millions of dollars out of parking lots, walkways, open spaces and other areas in the city; under the plan, the housing authority would lease land to private developers for projects featuring a mixture of apartments and commercial and retail space; at least 20 percent of the space would be set aside for affordable housing. MORE

Aug. 17, 2012

New York City Mayor Michael R Bloomberg decides to revamp New York City Housing Authority’s board after study concludes that the agency could reduce its annual spending by more than $70 million; changes, which would have to be approved by legislators in Albany, involve the removal of two highly paid appointees and replacing them with volunteers. MORE

Aug. 14, 2012

Editorial argues that the New York City Housing Authority, which has been extremely slow to make much-needed repairs in controlled and subsidized housing, will have to fix its management structure to ensure that the agency is better organized to spend federal dollars wisely and efficiently. MORE

Mar. 12, 2012

New York City Housing Authority, like other public housing authorities across the country, has a supply problem; by its count, there are 55,000 units in New York City’s public housing stock that are 'underoccupied,' and trying to get such tenants to move to smaller apartments is no easy task; tenants have no guarantee they will be able to stay in their buildings, and are reluctant to comply with orders to move; because so few have moved so far, people at the other end of the spectrum are growing impatient. MORE

Feb. 8, 2012

New York City Housing Authority Chairman John B Rhea has turned into a provocative figure since he was installed in 2009, credited with shaking up the bureaucracy and securing desperately needed federal grants; he has also stirred criticism and touched off an exodus of seasoned senior officials, endangering the future of the agency itself, by far the largest housing agency in the country and responsible for sheltering 600,000 people. MORE

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